Ecosystem Services: Origins, Contributions, Pitfalls, and Alternatives

By S. Lele, O. Springate-Baginski, Roan P. Lakerveld, Debal Deb, P. Dash. 2013

336 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The concept of ecosystem services (ES) has taken the environmental science and policy literature by storm, and has become almost the approach to thinking about and assessing the nature-society relationship. In this review, we ask whether and in what way the ES concept is a useful way of organising research on the nature-society relationship. We trace the evolution of the different versions of the concept and identify key points of convergence and divergence. The essence of the concept nevertheless is that the contribution of biotic nature to human well-being is unrecognised and undervalued, which results in destruction of ecosystems. We discuss why this formulation has attracted ecologists and summarise the resultant contributions to research, particularly to the understanding of indirect or regulating services. We then outline three sets of weaknesses in the ES framework: confusion over ecosystem functions and biodiversity, omission of dis-services, trade-offs and abiotic nature, and the use of an economic valuation framework to measure and aggregate human well-being. Underlying these weaknesses is a narrow problem frame that is unidimensional in its environmental concern and techno-economic in its explanation of environmental degradation. We argue that an alternative framing that embraces broader concerns and incorporates multiple explanations would be more useful, and outline how this approach to understanding the nature-society relationship may be implemented.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1fb77212192e55115406f1d260f89962bc88d50e

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Citations in the corpus

Creating win-wins from trade-offs? Ecosystem services for human well-being: A meta-analysis of ecosystem service trade-offs and synergies in the real world (2014, background): “contribution of biotic nature to human well-being is underrecognised and under-valued, which results in the alteration of ecosystems and the degradation of the resource base on which people rely (Lele et al., 2013).”
Elasticity in ecosystem services: exploring the variable relationship between ecosystems and human well-being (2016, background): “Although much research has focused on factors affecting the supply of ecosystem services, less attention has been given to the demand side (Lele et al. 2013, García-Nieto et al. 2013).”
Soil “Ecosystem” Services and Natural Capital: Critical Appraisal of Research on Uncertain Ground (2016, background): “The same year, Schlichting (1972) introduced the concept of multi-functionality of soils and described how the buffering capacity of soils in different respects is important to a multitude of organisms and to other parts of the landscape.”